The church of the former Monastery of Vilar de Friars, implemented in the area of ​​Primitive Romanesque and Benedictine Construction (269), came from the will of the evangelist priests of the five hundred and the Mecenato de D. Diogo de Sousa, Archbishop of Braga in 1505- 1532 , who financed the works of the chapel and the cruise.

Two relatives of this prelate, Dona Leonor de Lemos and Dona Teresa de Mendonça will, by the side, sponsored the arms of the transept.

As for the central body, more depending on the possessions of the religious and therefore misfit of the Manueline, it was in ruin in 1620 ending to be replaced by the current, more spacious and beautiful, in correspondence with the needs of the liturgy at the modern season. The moth of this "erudite" church has been attributed to João de Castilho or to his school from the formal and stylistic analysis of the Manuelino said: the chapel and transeptum, the axial portico and the ship. However, the discovery of the 1658 manuscript generated doubts about this attribution, because his author never refers to the name of the famous Bisco architect (which much worked, undoubtedly in Portugal) and gives the project to the master mason João Lopes, resident In the village of Guimarães.

The figure of D. Diogo de Sousa appears as the main protagonist, as a lender of the chapel and cruise. In fact, it will initially have manifested the will to sponsor the generality of the project - to think about the future, therefore, had "deliberate tenure" of being Vilar's chapel "its own grave" - ​​including "the factory of Capella Mor, Cruise and church body [...] and soon commissioned to the famous architect and master of works John Loppes de Guimarães "The execution of" all the machina of all the building starting Pella Capella mor "

The author of the church of Vilar Church may have been the famous architect João de Castilho. The project may die from the finals of the first decade of the 16th century, at a time when Castilho gave an end to the works of the bedside of the Sé de Braga, in 1509 (289) and prepared to work in the Church of S. João Baptista de Vila do Conde , in 1511 (290), the project of the Church of S. Salvador de Vilar de Friars have been designed between these two dates.